Happy Place

WHILE EVERYONE ELSE in town is packed into coffee shops and restaurants, sipping tea or eating clam chowder, the six of us brave the rain to tromp between candy stores and home decor boutiques filled with snarky hand towels about loving wine, our arms uselessly folded over our heads in lieu of umbrellas.

“Maybe we should go back to the house and chill,” Cleo suggests after one particularly loud crack of thunder and jarringly close bolt of lightning.

“What? No!” Sabrina cries.

Kimmy squints at the roiling sky. “I don’t think this rain’s going to let up.”

“Then we’ll go to a Roxy double feature,” Sabrina says.

“Do you even know what’s playing?” Cleo asks.

The Roxy has only two screens. At night, each is devoted to a new release, but in summer, the matinees are reserved for double features of movies set in Maine. Ninety percent of these are Stephen King adaptations, which works for Sabrina but is less than ideal for Cleo.

“Who cares what’s playing?” Sabrina says. “We always used to do this when we got rained out. It’s tradition.”

We follow her down the block toward the bored teen in the ticket booth out front.

Cleo eyes the marquee skeptically. “Salem’s Lot and Return to Salem’s Lot. Weren’t those miniseries?”

“Um, no,” Sabrina says. “Salem’s Lot was a two-part miniseries, and Return was a feature, and combined, they are glorious. You’re gonna love it.”

“I’m not sure I’m up for four hours of vampires?” Cleo says.

Kimmy pokes her ribs. “What if they glitter, though?”

“Oh, come on, Cleo,” Sabrina says. “Don’t be a wet blanket.”

“Please don’t call me that,” Cleo says.

Sabrina lifts her hands in supplication. “I’m just saying, this is the last time we’ll ever get to do one of these.”

I glance between them. We’re headed for a standoff. “Maybe you just come for the first movie,” I suggest.

“Miniseries,” Cleo reminds me.

“And then you can go to the Warm Cup and we’ll meet you after?”

Kimmy touches Cleo’s elbow. “I’ll go back to the house with you if you want, babe.”

Cleo’s delicate point of a chin lifts. “No, it’s okay. I don’t want to miss out. I’ll come to the first movie.”

Sabrina squeals, wheeling back to face the booth. “Tickets on me!”

At some point in the last thirty seconds, the attendant has donned a top hat, and it takes Sabrina a beat to remember what she’s even doing, face-to-face with this somber freckly teenager in Victorian headwear. “Six for the double feature?” she says.

“Yes, milady,” the teenager says.

On our way inside, Wyn hangs back. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”

“Do what?” I ask.

“Find some crafty compromise to their disagreements. They’ll work it out on their own if you let them.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say.

His brows flick upward in amusement. “None?”

“Zero,” I say.

“They’re having a great trip,” he says. “Try not to worry.”

My stomach flips. As much as has changed between us, he still knows me a little too well. “I’m fine.”

We take up the whole first row of the tiny theater, and since it’s otherwise empty, we stretch our wet outer layers on the seats behind us to dry. I’m trying to find a way to sneak in between Sabrina and Cleo; I wind up at the end of the row, with no one to talk to but Wyn, who fumbles with his phone—angled pointedly away from me—until the house lights come down.

At the first minor jump scare, I fight the impulse to burrow into his side. It’s not helping that it’s freezing in here, and every time I unthinkingly put my arm on the armrest, it brushes his arm, which is scalding in comparison to the meat-locker temperature of the room at large.

Sabrina leans forward and flashes a thumbs-up at us from the far end of the row. As if by instinct, Wyn snatches my hand against my thigh, and my heart leaps into my throat.

Our pulses bat back and forth between our palms, a human Newton’s cradle. It’s all I can focus on, this lone point of contact between us. I notice every minute twitch of his fingers.

I wonder if he’s thinking about last night, me perched on his lap with my arms slung around his neck, wriggling against him like a cat in heat, the tension between us building.

Because it’s suddenly all I can think about. Having the lights this low gives us too much privacy for this to feel like an act, yet not enough that we can completely avoid each other.

I’m so thoroughly not following the movie that when someone on-screen is impaled by a wall of antlers, it’s genuinely jarring.

“Oh, come on, Harriet,” he whispers as I yelp and thrust my face into his chest. “I’m sure that wasn’t your first antler impalement. I’ve seen your library books.”

“It’s different,” I hiss, drawing back to peer at him through the dark. “Those are cozy.”

“That just means whoever finds the body has a boring job and wears sweater-vests.”

“You know,” I say, “some would think your insistence on holding my hand suggests you’re a bit unnerved too.”

“I’m unnerved,” he says. “Just not by the movie.” He doesn’t sound flirtatious so much as resigned. Like this thing between us, this last ember of want, is an undesirable truth he’s accepted. As our gazes hold, the pressure builds between us, heady, potent.

I think about our four-minute breakup. Curt, sterile, almost surgical. I think about scrubbing our apartment top to bottom afterward, cleaning the grout with a toothbrush until sweat dripped into my eyes and never feeling any better, never managing to get my head above the waves of shock and grief.

I think of all the ways he let me down and of his most annoying habits. (I’ve never seen a dishwasher loaded so inefficiently.) But that’s not where my mind wants to go.

I need space. I need air. I need hours of hypnotherapy to erase him from my nerve endings.

“I need to use the bathroom,” I blurt, and slip out into the aisle.